Co-Geeking

The Greek historian Herodotus tells us a story about the death of the Persian king Cyrus that centers a fascinating female character, Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae.

Cyrus, king of Persia, wanted to expand his empire eastward into the lands of the Massagetae, a nomadic people ruled by their widowed queen Tomyris. Cyrus at first proposed marriage to Tomyris as a ruse for conquest, but she refused him. He then mustered his army and prepared to invade.

Cyrus’ adviser Croesus cautioned Cyrus against trying to fight the wild Massagetae, but since Cyrus was determined to proceed, Croesus proposed a stratagem to overcome them. Following Croesus’ advice, Cyrus led his army into Massagetae territory, then had them make camp and prepare a sumptuous feast with plenty of wine, but they did not eat it. He then withdrew with most of his army, leaving behind his weakest soldiers.

When a part of the Massagetae army led by Tomyris’ son Spargapises came upon the Persian camp, they easily defeated the Persian troops there. Then they saw the feast. Being used to living rough, they had never seen such an amazing spread of food before, so they immediately sat down and filled their bellies. When the feast had made them all drunk and sleepy, Cyrus led the rest of his army back to attack them, easily defeating the Massagetae warriors and capturing Spargapises.

When Tomyris learned of her people’s defeat and her son’s capture, she sent a message to Cyrus proposing a peaceful end to the conflict: if Cyrus returned Spargapises safe, Tomyris would allow the rest of Cyrus’ army to retreat from her lands unharmed. If he refused, Tomyris promised to satisfy his desire for blood. Cyrus refused, and when Spargapises came to his senses and found himself a prisoner, he killed himself.

Tomyris then marshaled the rest of her people and fell upon the Persians. The fighting was intense, but at the end of the day the Persians were routed and Cyrus himself was killed. Tomyris found the body of Cyrus and thrust his head into a wineskin full of blood, fulfilling her promise to slake his thirst for blood.

It’s a good story, as many of Herodotus’ are, but what are we to do with this as historical evidence? Did any of these events happen? Did Tomyris even exist?

We have reasons to be skeptical. No other historian mentions Tomyris, not even other historians who wrote about the life of Cyrus. The story Herodotus tells is full of dramatic moments that sound like they come from a Greek tragedy rather than from history. Cyrus figures as the tragic hero, a noble leader driven by ambition to attempt something that wiser men warn against and meeting an ironically fitting end. Tomyris’ line about sating his thirst for blood is a bit too on-the-nose to be real. Does anything in this story hold up?

The Massagetae at least were a real people, known from plenty of other sources, one of many nomadic cultures of the Central Asia steppes. Ancient sources are uncertain about their location, placing them anywhere between the Caspian Sea and the Altai Mountains, although whether this variation reflects the migrations of a mobile people, smaller sub-groups joining and leaving a tribal coalition, or just the ignorance of Mediterranean writers about the geography of Central Asia is hard to say. Among many ancient steppe cultures, women could wield both weapons and power. The idea that Cyrus died while leading an unsuccessful campaign against steppe nomads is likely to be true, and it is plausible that those people might have been ruled by a woman.

The rest of Herodotus’ narrative has more to do with Greek literature and oral tradition than with historical events, but that narrative also serves a larger point for Herodotus. Many powerful and wise women feature in Herodotus’ account of history. Tomyris is the first whose story he tells in detail, but she is followed by many others in both large roles and small, with Artemisia of Halicarnassus, who commanded her own ships in Xerxes’ invasion of mainland Greece, among the most prominent. Tomyris in some ways prefigures Artemisia: a wise warrior queen who gives the Persian king a chance to save himself from defeat and embarrassment, though he fails to heed her.

Tomyris appears near the beginning of Herodotus’ history, playing a role in the life of the first Persian king; Artemisia comes in at the end, taking her place next to the last Persian king to feature in Herodotus’ text. The repetition of the theme of the wise warrior woman at both the beginning of Herodotus’ history and at the end gives it a particular weight and prompts us to consider what point the historian was making. Herodotus’ text is layered with subtle messages, and many of the stories he tells have some applicability to the audience he was writing for. Herodotus lived and worked in Classical Athens, a society in which the status of women was low.

Women’s participation in Athenian social and political life was a casualty of democracy: since Athenian democracy was based on solidarity between citizen men across class lines, as manifested in all-male institutions like the voting assembly and the hoplite militia, the stronger the democracy was, the more women were pushed aside. Herodotus was a fan of democracy. His text points out how democracy, and especially the Athenian version of it, gave the Greek allies the strength and resilience to resist invasion by the monarchic Persian Empire. At the same time, he also seems to have been warning his Athenian audience that by leaving women out of public life, they were squandering one of their most valuable resources.

While contemporary Greek philosophers and playwrights were denigrating women’s capacity for rational thought and scoffing at the idea of them playing a role in politics, Herodotus had a different message. In his narrative, women can both lead military forces to victory and give sound advice on political matters, two areas of life that Athenian women were barred from. Herodotus’ women keep their heads in a crisis, and powerful men would be better off if they listened to what women told them.

Tomyris may be a fictional or heavily fictionalized character, but she helps us understand a critique of Athenian democracy as framed by someone who both lived with and admired it.

Image: “Head of Cyrus Brought to Queen Tomyris” via Wikimedia (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; c. 1622-1623; oil on canvas, by Peter Paul Rubens)

History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.